Culture Makers

A wide-ranging study of the cultural, social, and technological developments of the 1920s and their effect on the performing arts and literature

---

In this multidisciplinary study, Amy Koritz examines the drama, dance, and literature of the 1920s, focusing on how artists used these different media to engage three major concurrent shifts in economic and social organization: the emergence of rationalized work processes and expert professionalism; the advent of mass markets and the consequent necessity of consumerism as a behavior and ideology; and the urbanization of the population, in concert with the invention of urban planning and the recognition of specifically urban subjectivities. Koritz examines several plays from the 1920s--including Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape, Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine, and Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal--that embodied anxieties created by the mechanization of labor through both the Taylorized assembly line of Fordism and the rationalization of office work in corporate bureaucracies. She also focuses on the playwright Rachel Crothers, whose middlebrow flapper plays considered the consequences of mass production for the young affluent women expected to consume its goods.

The 1920s saw significant developments in both popular and formal dance, and Koritz explores the dance of this era through the lens of gender. Exploring the cultural anxieties surrounding female behavior and physical expression, she looks at the rise of popular dance during this time, particularly the extraordinarily popular Charleston. Legendary dancer and choreographer Martha Graham also began her career as a modern dancer during this time, and Koritz examines Graham's ability to achieve significant prestige as a female artist in a genre still considered marginal.

Finally, in the domain of American fiction and letters of the 1920s, this study points to several authors’ concerns with the social and cultural effects of urbanization in modern America. Analyzing the various and sometimes contrasting strategies of Anzia Yezierska's Salome of the Tenements, John Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer, and Lewis Mumford’s commentary on architecture and urban planning, Koritz shows how writers and public intellectuals were deeply engaged with working out the problems and possibilities of urban life.